A WOMAN claimed disability benefits for a catalogue of ailments while working as a waitress for an events company.

Florenze Brooks, 62, wrongly took almost £7,000 from the state, a court heard.

She had cancer and claimed income support and incapacity benefit - legitimately at first - from 2006. “She claimed in her form she had substantial physical difficulties,” prosecutor James Kemp told Teesside Crown Court..

She said she had pain and discomfort in walking, sometimes couldn’t clean herself and needed help from family. She also said she could only walk or sit for minutes at a time and had falls.

In 2007 she started working for a catering company. She worked as a waitress, on her feet for eight hours a day at the Paris Air Show for five days, and at racecourse meetings across the North-east.

Mr Kemp said her condition had improved and Brooks failed to tell the Department for Work and Pensions of the changes in her situation.

Brooks was paid an excess of £6,954 in benefits.

Her solicitors wrote to the prosecution saying she was “near death” with ovarian cancer, but she did not satisfy the Crown her claims were true.

Brooks, of High Street, Yarm, admitted two charges of failing to notify a change in circumstances between June 2007 and November 2008.

Andrew Teate, defending, said Brooks suffered from cancer in 2006, was affected by the serious and significant condition and made legitimate claims.

He said: “This is a first offence for a lady of 62 years of age who has never been before any court and never been arrested prior to this offence.”

He said she hadn’t been in trouble since the work period in the summer of 2007.

She was still in poor health, was helped by her daughter and was applying for bankruptcy.

Judge Tony Briggs told Brooks: “In these straightened times anyone who claims benefits they’re not entitled to is likely to attract a good deal of condemnation from the public.

“It is plain you’re not in good health and haven’t been for a while.

“However, it’s also plain that you were working and claiming benefits at the same time, although the actual work earnings were by no means great.”

He gave her a three-month prison sentence suspended for one year with one condition - to live at her own address for 28 days.